We was po', part ii: in which a low SES girl discusses salary...

A friend and fellow religion major posted this chart on his facebook feed today...As Religious Studies people we come in at 12th worst paid, and one of my other loves, Women's Studies (listed as Interdisciplinary Studies), comes in at 15th. His comment was that we don't do it for the money, and that's true. No one becomes a religion scholar hoping to make the big bucks. It just doesn't happen, and if you are someone who thought this, you've been lied to, my friend. So, I agree with him, BUT (you knew that was coming, right?) I have a serious issue with the entire thing...

The starting pay for Religious Studies was listed as $34,700. For someone raised in an upper middle to upper class home, this may seem a paltry amount. However, as someone raised in a lower SES home and an economically depressed area and who spent seven years in an even more economically depressed rural area, I'm here to tell you, $34,700 sounds like a fortune. That is, in fact, almost exactly three times what I made at my retail and hospitality jobs in the aforementioned rural area. As my lovely wife pointed out, I am aware that once you spend all this time and money (that you will be paying back until the end of time) getting a degree, maybe some people expect a lot more. I will also grant you that people from my background do attend college to make a better life than that of family who possibly did not get a degree and spent their lives struggling financially. All of this is true, but when I remind myself of this, there is a little nagging at the back of my mind that still protests...

When I returned to college after my little hiatus, I realized quickly that I had stepped into a world where a large portion of the people were speaking an entirely different language. (For more on this, see my post HERE.) This has not changed over the couple of years since then; it has actually become even more apparent. Now, let me say that the people I go to school with are not all bad; i like many of them, even the ones from this other planet called "well-off." It's just that the further I progress, the more like I feel I'm bashing my head against a brick wall. I dropped Women's Studies as a career path for this very reason. Every single WST class I took it seemed I spent half my time attempting to interject a low SES rural point of view into the discussion. I just could not see spending my entire career doing that. Now I'm afraid that Religion will be the same...

I suppose that given a certain kind of upbringing, 35 grand a year might not cut it, but as for me, where do i sign?

One down, too many to go...

Today Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Prop 8, declaring that it

"the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution's due process and equal protection clauses while failing "to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license...Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," the judge wrote in his 136-page ruling." (from the Yahoo News article, from which the picture is also taken).

My first reaction is a crazy dance around my living room, all-caps responses to the texts alerting me, and a facebook status filled with many, many exclamation points. This is amazing news!! After all, if the California ban can be shot down by the Constitution, all the others can too, right? I hope so. But I have learned in this fight that it is never a good idea to assume anything...I assumed Florida voters would have enough sense not to pass Amendment 2. I assumed that humans would have more sense and sympathy for their fellow creatures not to protest and say nasty things at funerals. On both counts, I was sadly mistaken.

However, as incredibly sad and beaten-down as I feel everyday about these things, I am given hope today by Judge Walker. SOMEONE sees that we are not trying to destroy anything; all we're doing is trying to build lives and protect those we love, to make those shiny rings on our left hands a true symbol of solidity. Thank you Judge Walker.

Now, please excuse me while I dance!

i must have missed that memo: in which a feminist ponders the "agenda"

while watching mona lisa smile for the hundredth time, i stumbled on a review of the film that claimed it was solely a vessel for the...dunh dunh dunh..."feminist agenda." i have called myself a feminist for as long as i can remember. i think i may have carried from birth the impulse to correct the imbalances and wrongs women deal with everyday. one of my majors is women's studies, whose main purpose is the study of just that. so imagine my surprise at the rumors of an "agenda."

as long as there has been any sort of women's rights movements, there have been people claiming that there are nefarious plots to destroy the family and the world underlying everything. any movie or book or anything really that appears to even slightly support a feminist idea is immediately labeled a part of our insidious plot to warp the minds of all in our path and generally create chaos. this has lead to the demonization of feminism as a whole, to such an extent that women are loath to use the word let alone use it to describe themselves. frankly, i'm tired of it. i may have made the decision to pursue religion instead of women's studies as a career, but that has its owns reasons, which do NOT include not wanting to be known as a feminist. this is not to say that women's studies and feminism have their problems; they certainly do. it is these and not some desire to distance myself from feminism. but that is a topic for another blog...